Fight or Fright

I thought I’d seen it all. I read the polling data showing that 30% of New York Jews had voted for Zohran Mamdani for mayor. I also knew that the Satmar community strongly disapproved of the re-creation of the State of Israel by secular Jews and refused to recognize it. I had even read that a Satmar dual U.S.-Israeli citizen had been arrested in September for allegedly spying for Iran against Israel, but dismissed that as an aberration.

I was, however, stunned to read that Rabbi Moishe Indig, leader of the Satmar congregations of Williamsburg and Boro Park, had actually endorsed Mamdani and was prepared to work with him on issues of concern. In a long interview with Yitzchok Landa of Mishpacha magazine, Rabbi Indig explained his reasoning:

I’ve been working with open, unabashed antisemites since the beginning. My approach is always that you catch more flies with honey. Don’t fight! I’m a Satmarer, and the Satmar shitah taught to us by the Divrei Yoel, was always lo l’hisgaros b’umos, never antagonize the nations. It doesn’t make a difference what religion they observe – Christian, Muslim, or whatever, do not fight. We’re in Galus. We are grateful to have the privilege, baruch Hashem, in this malchus shel chesed, to have a say, to vote, to endorse or support whomever we feel would be best for us. But we do not use it as a weapon, do not go to war with anybody. That’s a big no-no.

The first antisemite in history was Eisav. And what did Yaakov do? He gave him piles of gifts. Ja, mein Herr. Yeah, I’m your slave, how are you? What else can I do for you? He hugged and kissed him even while Eisav was trying to bite him.

With this approach, we’ve won over many people.

While it’s difficult to argue with the successes the rabbi has had in winning over antisemites, I do have several caveats. First, Rabbi Indig’s successes have been with politicians who are fellow Americans in ideology; winning over immigrant Islamist-socialists promises to be more difficult. Second, citing Yaakov’s appeasement of Eisav overlooks differences in circumstances. Despite their conflict, Yaakov and Eisav were fraternal twin brothers, so that after decades apart, a reconciliation might still be possible. And their conflict was over money, the distribution of Yitzchak’s estate, since the birthright conveyed a double portion. Eisav had no interest in the spiritual aspects of the birthright, and might perhaps have feared committing some transgression against the G-d he professed not to believe in. In contrast, the conflict between the Jewish people and Mamdani is over a spiritual and theological difference that is far more intractable.

In any event, the foregoing discussion raises the centuries-old question of which element of Yaakov’s strategy for dealing with Eisav – appeasement, preparation for war, and prayer – is most advisable in dealing with antisemites. The answer is most likely “it depends.” Of course, the default is appeasement, or at least avoiding conflict. In fact, in the December 5^th column of Rav Dovid Feinstein’s divrei Torah on the parsha, the great sage stated that Yaakov intentionally sought on his return to Israel to meet up with Eisav to establish this precedent.

This wasn’t always the case, however. Beginning with Avraham’s fight to rescue Lot and continuing through the Exodus to the events of Purim and Chanukah, Jews have had to fight our enemies.

(Incidentally, a theory occurred to me that besides Avraham’s insufficient emunah at the Covenant between the Pieces, an additional unstated consequence of our exile in Egypt is that we were able to return four generations later with six hundred thousand men and a total population of several million, sufficient to defeat the Canaanite nations seemingly by natural means, whereas if we had remained in Eretz Yisrael, at some point our numbers would have reached a level where the Canaanites could have seen us as a threat and attacked us, necessitating that Hashem perform open miracles far less dramatic than parting the Red Sea to save us. If this reasoning is faulty, the fault is mine.)

Naturally, the situation changed dramatically with the failed revolt against Rome in 66-70 CE that left the Second Temple in ruins and a million Jews slaughtered, a result made more tragic because the elders had counseled restraint, and three wealthy men had each donated a storehouse of supplies that could have enabled Jerusalem to withstand a siege of several years and possibly negotiate a settlement with the Romans, only to be thwarted when a group of young hotheads, the Zealots, burned down the storehouses to force the Jews to fight. For nearly 2,000 years, without a state of our own or an army to defend us, we had no choice but to accept subjugation and try to appease our enemies, some of whom were implacable.

Our practices started to change with the Zionist migration from Europe and the Middle East beginning in the 1880s, and by 1920, Joseph Trumpeldor, who was later killed in action, organized the defense of kibbutzim. The most dramatic change, however, occurred in Nazi-dominated Europe. As the Holocaust accelerated, Jews began rebelling, even though it meant almost certain death. Most notable was the Warsaw ghetto. While the situation superficially resembled the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans, there were differences. Early in the war there was considerable discussion and debate about what to do, but after mass deportations to the Treblinka death camp in the summer of 1942, when it became apparent that the Nazis intended to kill everyone, young men led by the charismatic Mordecai Anielewicz took control. They sent a messenger through the sewers to request armaments from the Polish Underground and prepared to fight, so that when the Germans sent an armored column on April 19, 1943 to round up 8,000 more Jews for deportation, they were fired upon and driven back for two consecutive days. Although the revolt ended tragically on May 16 – when German troops stormed the command bunker, either executing on the spot or assigning for deportation the civilians who surrendered, while Anielewicz and his fighters committed suicide – the rebels having held out for a month against a far superior and better-armed force was heroic. And just five years later, the results were very different as a nation of 600,000 Israelis triumphed over millions of Arabs, despite suffering 6,000 casualties, or 1% of the population, equivalent to 3.5 million Americans today.

In fact, a new paradigm has arisen, that of the Isaac-covenant Jew, as described by Rabbi Yehuda L. Oppenheimer in the December 5 edition of The Jewish Press. His thesis is that while Yaakov and his descendants had to be submissive supplicants because they were socially powerless, nowadays the descendants of Yitzchak can stand straight and tall because we have social standing, and especially because we have Medinat Yisrael, the State of Israel. As he puts it, “An Isaac Covenant Jew refuses to apologize for living. He refuses to bow because Eisav is shouting. He refuses to assume that the hatred of others must be his compass.”

Consequently, as the Zohar (I 119a-119b) predicted, even though “the children of Yishmael… rise in violent opposition to our return to the Land, igniting global conflicts that [will] reshape the world,” we must “stand tall, walk with Hashem, and the day will come when even our fiercest critics will be forced to admit the truth – willingly or otherwise.”

Meanwhile, we live in perilous times, as exemplified by the explosion of antisemitism on the “progressive” Left, and its growth on the Right, as promoted by Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, who apparently have the ambition to be the Joseph Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl of the 21^st century. Moreover, it’s alarming that someone as close to President Trump as Steve Bannon is in their corner. The danger is so great that in a recent podcast, noted classicist and historian Dr. Victor Davis Hanson expressed concern that the West is sliding toward open season on Jews, where we’ll be hunted down like dogs. As evidenced by the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the likely targeted killing of Brown University student activist Ella Cook, conservative Christians are also threatened.

This may not be the whole story, however. I recently listened to a discussion on Real Talk between Dennis Prager and Prager U CEO Marissa Streit in which he mentioned that Israel is fighting against seven enemies. (This is not counting the highly successful Hamas propaganda war, aided by international media, academia, and celebrities who, starting the day after the October 7 massacre, depicted Israel as the perpetrator rather than the victim of genocide. Its widespread support illustrates the depth of latent Jew-hatred even among Americans.)

It suddenly dawned on me that seven is the same number of enemies who attacked Israel in the 1948 War of Independence. Could it be that the Gaza War is meant to resolve the unfinished business from the 1948 war, which ended with Israel’s surviving and expanding its territory beyond the 1947 partition plan but without a true political settlement?